


Dream A Little Dream

by lindsey_grissom



Series: Crystal Heart [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-02
Updated: 2008-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-10 14:44:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He's too young to be bitter</i>.  Third in the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/3978">Crystal Heart</a> 'Verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dream A Little Dream

Stars and planets zip across his face, lines and lines of blurring colour lighting up the dull room and casting him into bright shadows.

He lies on his back, knees bent, arms up behind his head as he watches the view of the universe before him. Slowly the movement stills leaving only the crystal view of a planet, green and blue. This is his favourite planet. For all his need to be amongst the stars, he thinks he will always love the Earth.

The image he sees now is not the one he would see were he to look down from space in this time. This is the image of an Earth long lost to the History books. A 21st Century Earth that had barely seen the birth of technology and the presence of a world outside their own.

He often wonders what it would be like to have lived then. To not have any of the few things he has today. Having to rely on medical care only _after_ a disease has been caught. Using pens and paper. He thinks he would have enjoyed that.

Of course, he would never have existed in the past, because as the nurses tell him, he has no parents, no one wants him and if it hadn't been for the hospice he would never have been conceived at all. But, he would have liked it anyway.

He is the only one in his History class that is fascinated with Earth's history _before_ Alien contact. His classmates think him strange, something their parents are only too quick to support and so at eleven he doesn't have the same amount of friends he used to.

He isn't alone though, he still has some friends. Children who use him as a way to rebel against their parents, or find him interesting with no parents and no name.

He's too young to be bitter enough to turn even their friendship away, but it doesn't matter, because James is still his best friend, and that's all he really needs.

There is an agency they learn about, the Time Agency. He and James are going to sign up when they're old enough. Because then it won't just be new planets he can visit, but old times. It's a very selective agency and he knows that without a name and family he is going to have to work twice as hard to prove himself, but that's okay, because he loves to learn and he was designed to be smart after all.

No one from the Boeshan Peninsula has been selected for the Time Agency before. But he is determined to be the first, well one of the first, because James will be too.

His teachers tell him he shouldn't reach for the stars like he does, because he will never reach them, not him; the only Orphan for centuries. But he tells them that if he can be the first Orphan then he can be the first Time Agent from Boe too.

When their words don't stop his dreams they try to beat them out of him. It doesn't work, he knows he is destined for travel, why else would he have nothing to keep him in one place?

He watches as the miniature Earth spins on its orbit, its tiny moon circling fast. From the position of the Sun and the tilt of the planet he can tell the date and year and time that has been captured forever in the hologram, but he doesn't need to because he knows this one by heart already.

He imagines all the people that were once walking across the Earth, not knowing that somewhere in the future Humans were getting ready to travel back in time for the sole purpose of making a recording. He has read enough of the classic literature to know that as an Orphan he wouldn't have had the same life as his friends, even in the past. But the difference is that Dickens' Orphans found families in the end. He can't help wondering if he would have too.

The hologram vanishes with a spark as the door to his room is pushed open, and he shoves the disk shaped controller beneath his pillow. The nurses sneer at his dreams too.

"B14593Y it is time for your review." No matter which nurse comes to see him, they all sound the same. If he hadn't heard James's Mother he wouldn't have known that not everyone speaks in such cold tones.

He doesn't respond to the statement with words; the nurses prefer him to keep quiet, and really there isn't much he could say anyway. Instead he pushes himself up and follows the nurse down the corridor to the library.

He isn't allowed in here often, a few hours a week, and then an hour a day for his reviews. He loves the room though, because it is so full of knowledge and he wishes they would let him stay here. The things he could learn.

"B14593Y, you will recite all you have learnt today in lessons." He holds back a sigh, what he wouldn't give for a proper conversation. Thema is the only nurse that treats him like a person rather than an experiment. She isn't at the Hospice all the time though, she has a family of her own, but when she is, he knows she spends more time than she should with him.

She taught him to speak, sure he learnt words from all the nurses, but it was only Thema that took the time to teach him sentences and structures.

He speaks in a steady tone, listing off everything he learnt. There is no excitement in his voice, even though he wants to tell them, tell anyone, just how much he learnt about 18th Century Earth today. But he doesn't, and while his mouth forms dull words, his mind relives the day with all the excitement he isn't allowed to express.

When he is done, the nurse - Thema is the only one that ever told him her name – leads him back to his room and he follows her in silence. James told him once that his Father makes him review his lessons too sometimes, and for a moment he had thought that he had a sort of family after all. But then James told him all about the home-made cocoa and sweets he gets afterwards when he remembers everything right, and the thought was lost.

He doesn't want a family now anyway, because whenever he talks about leaving Boe and never coming back, James always mentions his Mother and Father, and how he would miss them, and he doesn't want something that could stop him from living among the stars.

The nurse checks his room before she leaves him alone. She doesn't feel underneath his pillow and he's glad. The main Doctor, with steely grey eyes, had found his hologram once. He had had a split lip for a week after that.

When the nurse has gone he falls back onto the bed, knees bent, hands behind his head and the hologram flashes back on. Fifteen minutes, and the lights in the Hospice shut off. He wriggles out of his day clothes and into his night wear, settling in the same position under the light weight sheet.

The stars and planets flash by, never slowing, never stopping and they cast a flicker of bright light across the cheeks of the boy destined to join them.

As he falls into sleep he thinks of the streaks of light and smiles softly. One day…


End file.
